Conventional devices and methods are used, among other things, to carry out cryptographic procedures or in general to process security-relevant data, in particular in the field of IT security. Conventionally, the aforementioned systems and methods, or more precisely their specific implementation as hardware and software, are attackable in a target system, such as a multi-core microcontroller or the like, using so-called side channel attacks. In these side channel attacks, one or multiple physical parameters (e.g., power consumption, electromagnetic radiation and the like) of a system to be attacked are detected and analyzed with respect to a correlation with secret data, such as secret keys of cryptographic procedures. An attacker is then able to obtain information therefrom about the secret key and/or the processed data.
Another class of attacks against the aforementioned systems and methods is to actively introduce, i.e., inject, faults into the system as a method is being carried out. These attacks are also referred to as fault injection attacks.